Students get expert advice on starting garden

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — Kids at a Wilmington elementary school got some expert help planting the seeds of learning. The staff from Airlie Gardens visited College Park Elementary today to help create a garden on campus.

Matt Collogan, the head educator at Airlie, helped explain to the students the importance of plants. He also explained why this education program is so important.

“The students, first of all, need more opportunities to get outside and learn,” Collogan said. “We have something called nature deficit disorder. It’s all around us. The kids are more plugged in these days than ever before, and what they’re missing out on is time outside, and a lot of that is just lack of familiarity. If we get the students outside they start observing, and they start being able to identify different plants and different animals.”

Collogan says that the more we cooperate with nature the better we will all be. He says it all starts with the kids.